It’s Nice That: The film opens with a lighthouse panning the ocean and music slowly building in tension. Lighthouses are symbolic in literature and art – what does it mean in this context?
Jonathan Zawada: For me the lighthouse really symbolises this attempt at orienting yourself in a totally disorienting and changing environment. They are incredibly precarious positions to be in. From the perspective of the lighthouse, it is only ever illuminating the tiniest glimpse of the world around in this giddy, constantly spinning dance. From the perspective of a passing ship, it is the most minimal hint of information to go off to help warn you of danger.
There is an interesting mixture of perspectives at play, the sailors at sea and the very stranded and isolated lighthouse keeper on the rock, the lone individual and the group or community. Historically, from an economic and social standpoint they’re incredibly interesting too, being an odd mixture of a publicly funded service that operates in aid of trade and commerce, but which cannot directly make money itself. It’s an emblem of a kind of social contract that develops hand in hand with the evolution of a complex economy, welcoming the outsider.
INT: Can you describe the synopsis that follows in as few words as you can?
JZ: One of the most fundamental ideas of the film is really that we each apply our own narrative to the world we find ourselves in, that there are positive or negative forces taking place, but they are all just a matter of perspective. In that sense it’s tricky to give the film a synopsis, but first and foremost it was always intended as something that could visually support and enhance the feeling in the music without taking over it too much or being entirely secondary to it. I wanted it to represent the world as broadly as possible, but from a non-objective or removed perspective. Something that collapses history, economics, myth and art – in the way we do in our individual lives – into its own strange little fable.